New contest: FREE STUFF (no asterisk this time), plus trade stuff

Jefferson Burdick says TRAAAAAAAAAADE

Before I get to the contest below, I want to take a minute to solicit new people for trades.  I have a comprehensive wantlist, which you can see to your right.  That includes sets and teams/players.  If you have a favorite team or player, or you're also working on sets, please leave a comment below or hit my email link to your right.  I have a bunch of stuff that I can put into team or player lots, and a good amount of set fillers (also listed on my SCF wantlist page linked above and to your right).  Sets I'm working on that I'm ohsoclose to finishing:

1994 Topps: 64 87
1995 Topps: 391
1996 Sportflix: 69 90
1996 Ultra: 523
1996 Upper Deck Ripken Collection: 22
1997 Bowman's Best: 134
1997 Fleer: 108 212 685
1997 Score Premium Stock: 1 22 24 122 123 130 156 187 215 310 349
1998 Pinnacle Mint Bronze Cards: 25
1998 Score Rookie Traded: 181
1998 Studio Portraits: 7 10 13 16
1998 Upper Deck: 18 260 603 610 629
1999 Skybox Thunder: 265 281 290
1999 Stadium Club: 100 141
1999 Topps: 374 461 (Any Sosa)
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck CDs: 3 10 23 25
2000 Bowman: 180 192 399
2000 Fleer: 129
2000 Ultra: 11 89 200
2000 Upper Deck MVP Set 2: 100
2001 Donruss Retro 2000: 15 23 24 58 63
2001 Fleer Platinum Rookie Reprints: 2 6 8 17
2001 Fleer Triple Crown: 65 92 298
2001 Stadium Club: 160 161 167 170 187 189 191 196 198
2001 Topps Archives: 180
2001 Upper Deck: 367 414
2002 Donruss: 3
2002 Donruss Rookies: 95 104
2002 Topps: 338 339
2002 Topps Archives: 10 113 125 136 139 157 174 189
2004 Bowman: 198
2004 Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Edition: 14 48
2004 Leaf Second Edition: 4 32 33 42 50 66 82 111 136 182 195
2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites: 5 15 21 25 34 38 50 82 97 112
2004 Topps Traded set 1: 7 13 15 18 24 76 78 82 89 102 130 170 198
2005 Flair: 7 24 30 36
2005 Fleer Patchworks: 4 13 15 29 55 61 68 69
2005 Skybox Autographics: 26 40 45 54 60
2005 Topps: 350
2006 Topps: 53 76 90 146 155 188 224 231 252 274 275 280 281 290 297 319
2006 Ultra: 37 75 95
2007 Topps Series 2: 530 618
2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition (Set 2): 11 15 58 59 67 74 79 96 97
2008 Topps Co-Signers: 24 28 50 70 74 78 96 99
2009 Donruss Elite Extra Edition (set 2): 26 30 31 33 41 45
2009 Topps Update: 18 24 30 39 46 100 145 147 167 224 238
2010 Bowman: 4 109
2010 Topps: 452

Help me out!  And get your favorite team/player in the process!

NEW CONTEST

Not included in the contest, so don't guess him

This one is totally altruistic this time, I promise--well, mostly.  I'm not bribing you guys to advertise me on your blogs this go round, I'm just killing two birds with one stone by giving away some packs that I don't need.

You might remember the box of 2007 Topps gravity packs I opened a few posts back.  You might also recall that while I completed a set from the box, I had leftover packs because I caught on to the sorting scheme they used.  These are the packs I'm passing on to one lucky winner.  Here's how it works:

-There are 8 total packs of 22 cards (plus 3+ year old gum!).  That's like, 172 cards or something, and they're probably mostly, if not entirely, different considering what I saw from opening the packs I did
-All packs are from Series I.  That would include anything from #1-#330 here
-All the packs are different, at least in terms of the players that show on the top and bottom
-All 8 packs have a different player showing on the front
-All of the topmost cards are of a single player (ie no subsets, multi-player cards, team cards, etc.)
-All of those cards are of actual players (ie no managers)
-The last names of the players on the eight cards start with a total of 6 different letters
-6 are of players pictured on AL teams, 2 NL.  The AL Central is well represented

That's all the hints you'll get.  Your job is to guess as many of those eight different players' names as you can.  Whoever gets the most correct by next Wednesday (the 22nd) at 7 pm EST (give or take a few minutes, I'll do my best) gets all eight packs (giving me a day or two to get their address and ship them off).  Should there be a tie, the tie-breaker will be the players on the back, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

Other rules:
-Only 1 entry per person--include something to uniquely identify you in your comment (blog URL, full email address (formatted however you'd like to avoid spam, such as "user @ gmail dot com"), or whatever else you can think of)
-You only get 1 entry but in case you change your mind, I'll use your final guess closest to the contest's end
-I'll only accept entries that include the names of  8 different players at most.  If you'd rather guess fewer, that's fine by me, though you'd be dumb to do that and decrease your odds
-If nobody's guessed more than 1 or 2 by Tuesday evening, I'll give some hints and everyone can amend their guesses.  However, I won't specifically mention which players, if any, have been correctly guessed.
-If I get 10 or more different entries, I'll throw in the following swag to the winner:
     2005 Topps Chrome A-Rod Throwbacks (4-card) set, an $8 value
     2002 Bowman Francisco Liriano RC ($8)
     1985 Topps Kirby Puckett RC (because I've got a bunch) ($12)

Sound good?  That's a buttload of free stuff!  Again, I'm not asking you to pimp me on your blog this time, but feel free to mention this contest to your friends to make it more interesting.

Good luck guessing!

Appropriate because of the question marks, plus I'm GIVING AWAY FREE STUFF THAT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT SO CALL TODAY!  (Note:  Mattew Lesko is not affiliated with this blog in any way--there's no free money in it)

2007 Topps Series 1 Retail Jumbo/Rack Box

[PROGRAMMING NOTE:  I'm going to be upfront:  this wasn't a terribly exciting box.  Hence the occasional digression, including Youtube clips.  Enjoy.]

FINALLY a baseball box review.  I somehow missed out on getting a hobby box of 2007 Topps Series 1 a couple years ago, and had maybe 100 cards from various packs, so when I was ordering some other boxes, I decided to grab this one to hopefully finally complete my set.

While I couldn't expect much out of this box, it actually turned out to be interesting, in a way, as you'll find out below.  I did have previous experience with a box like this--2006 Topps, in fact.  At the local Meijer I saw what I thought was a rack box on sale for about $20 and immediately grabbed it.  Like this one, it actually turned out to be a box of those weird hanging jumbo-type packs that sell cheap because they don't have any inserts.  In this case, though, you at least get a stick of gum, I guess.  That box underwhelmed me since it didn't really help me much with my set and gave me a lot of crap doubles.  Anyway, on with the review.

• Purchased from/price:  Dave & Adam's Card World, $21.95
• Packs/cards:   24 packs / 22 cards
• Set size:  330 base cards (technically including the Jeter + Mantle/Bush)
• Key features:  Not much, really.  The stale stick of gum in every pack?
• Key cards:  #40, a variation of a Derek Jeter card with the Mick and Chimpy McFlightSuit shoop'd in (I can tell by some of the pixels).

(I couldn't find the Simpsons "Chimpy McFlightSuit" clip, so here's "Hail to the Chimp" instead)

Here's what the packs look like--note the gum separated into its own compartment on the left

Sample front and back

The key Jeter variation (I've circled Mantle and GWB)

• Set completion:  330/330 (100%)
• Extras:  198 (technically--see below)

• Inserts:  Nope (none expected)
• Autographs:  None (none expected)
• Relics:  None (none expected)

• Best pack:  Nothing really stood out much, but #4 did have these players:  Brandon Webb, Greg Maddux, Mike Sciosscia, Johan Santana, Scott Rolen and Albert Pujols
  
• Worst pack:  The only one I opened that was entirely doubles (again, see below)
• Quality control:  10/10  Nothing was really damaged, and I give Topps big points for learning from 50+ years of experience and separating the gum from the cards 
• Collation:  10/10  I pulled a full set, and even got smart with the doubles (I keep teasing this, but read on below)
• Value: 9/10  One full set and a bunch of extras for about $20 (plus three-year-old gum, if you're interested in that kind of thing).  No inserts, though 
• Set design and player selection:  9/10  I ding sets like this a point because those black borders are prone to showing flaws like bad corners and edges.  Other than that, I like the front and back design.  This was a typical Topps set of vets, rookies and subsets, which was fine
• Inserts and extras: 7 /10  This is where I most have to criticize the box--for its lack of any kind of inserts--but at the same time it's important to be fair about it.  You're not led to believe you'll get anything extra, and for the price you do get cards and gum, so it's not exactly unreasonable.  Also, the Jeter card is decently cool, and somewhat valuable thanks to is SP-ness--

Ok, I was up-front about digressions in this post, and now I have to admit that I made that last comment as an excuse to post one of my favorite (but relevant) clips from "The Critic", a show gone too soon:

I loves me some Maurice LaMarche doing is inimitable Orson Welles impression, be it on "The Animaniacs", "Pinky and the Brain", "Futurama", you name it. 

Overall score:  45/50

Besides the fact that I easily completed the set, here's the biggest reason I liked this box, even without the promise of pulling anything extra:  unlike my usual box busting process, on a whim I began sorting packs as soon as I opened them.  About nine or 10 packs in, I pulled one that was entirely doubles.  Remembering that Topps (and most other manufacturers, I'm sure) doesn't believe in being random with packs, and knowing that I could see the top and bottom card on each pack, I scanned each and separated out the ones that had cards I'd already pulled.  Because I did that, I only ended up with the one pack full of doubles.  Doing the math, 15 was enough to complete the set, and that left me with eight unopened packs instead of a bunch of semi-useless doubles.  Look for those eight extra (unopened) packs in some sort of future giveaway (that doesn't necessarily involve shameless self-promotion)

We have a baseball team too

 Michigan Wolverines: Rich Hill, J.J. Putz